


Crossing Flatlands To You

by maybethrice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 5 + 1 format, 5 Times, Attempted Seduction, F/M, Marriage Politics, Politics, Seduction For All The Right Reasons, Seduction For All The Wrong Reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:56:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7039576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybethrice/pseuds/maybethrice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes them years to get it right, for the right reasons, at the right time. </p><p>Five reasons Sansa had to seduce Jon, and the one reason he had to seduce her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. v. - sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt ['Five times Sansa tries (very unsuccessfully) to seduce Jon Snow, and the one time he seduces her.']() at valar_morekinks, with my apologies to the original prompter, who almost certainly had something other than this in mind.

The first time is strategic; the calculated act of a woman yearning for peace and a touch of kindness.

Jon Snow stands at the table set up in the far corner of the tent with worry lining his face, where he has been for hours already. Though Jon is not the same boy she knew — by the gods, he is not even who she believed him to be at all — she knows he will take no rest until he finds the answer he craves. 

“You’ll find nothing on an empty stomach,” she says to him when she brings food to him. 

Jon looks up from the map pinned at the corners with wide-eyed surprise, one hand tucked neatly behind his back, the scarred fingers of the other tracing lines across the drawn facsimile of the North. Sansa’s heart flutters in her chest. She knows better now than to think that Jon is her half-brother, but he looks so like her father. For a moment, she feels like she could be back home in Winterfell, in Lord Eddard’s study, having interrupted her father’s work for an indulgent kiss on her hair.

It is no surprise that they found each other on the same errand, though she came from the Vale in the south and he from the Wall in the north. What they each hoped to accomplish on their own might have been near impossible, and what they might yet do together far more than they dreamed at all. With Winterfell secure, they are able to turn their attention to regrouping the northern forces and preparing for something worse even than the ravages of war. 

They are both cold and lonely, have seen too much of the horrors the world offers them, but planning the defense of the North and the persistent food scarcity in Westeros leaves no time for any meaningful kind of comfort. Jon spends his hours planning fortifications and worrying how they will find enough dragonglass to save them when the time comes. Sansa writes letters, spends hours in meetings with what she has come to think of as her small council as they summon bannermen, call for aid, and negotiate for what they need from those who will give only in exchange for the precious little the North has to trade. 

With all of this, Sansa knows there may never be time again for this, and that is what convinces her that this is the right thing to do. It is not only for her, she thinks stubbornly. Jon needs it, too.

“I brought dinner,” Sansa explains, lifting the tray with a half-smile. There is no butter for the dark, heavy bread, but the stew is thick with root vegetables and fish and the spices mulled into the hot wine will help it go down easily for both of them. It might make it easier for her to ask for the thing she wants of him.

A piece of something lost, however small. 

Jon eats as long as Sansa is there with him, drinking wine from a horn and willing herself to say the words that will set this in motion. She feels fluttery and warm after a while, though there are no braziers lit in this tent, and color finally comes back to Jon’s face.

She wills herself to cover the silence hanging heavy as ghosts in the tent, leans toward him, her eyelashes casting long shadows over her cheek. Surely he wants this, too. Sansa has heard about the women Jon loved, knows she is not like them, but she does not need him to love her in that way. 

All she needs is for him to step into the empty place left by all that has been ripped away. And in return, she will do all she can to fill the the one in him.

“Jon,” Sansa breathes with intent. She extends one shaking hand to float over his, but she cannot bring herself to look at him directly. It is too painful how he so resembles all the things she longs for. Jon Snow is not her brother, has never been, and perhaps it’s better that way.

When he closes his hand into a fist and draws it away with a kind smile and a half-mumbled excuse, Sansa is surprised to find that she is relieved.


	2. iv. - hope

There are thousands celebrating across the camp with bonfires and cacophonous noise, but Sansa is alone in her tent, staring into the fire left for her solitary comfort. She is sure that so much of their joy is as much shocked relief that the chaos of these last years is at an end, that the worst has come and they have survived it.

Hope and grief are tangled up with one another. It is all over now, but Sansa finds that peace and victory do not taste as sweet as she imagined they would. 

“They’ve found a few old instruments, and a few of the soldiers remember how to play.” Jon’s voice comes to her with a rush of icy air, Ghost trailing behind him. “I thought I’d find you dancing with them.” 

“In snowdrifts as deep as there are?” Sansa turns from the dancing flames, extends her arm to him to draw him closer.

Jon starts to take her hand to kiss it, a formal gesture that he abandons at an upward flick of her eyebrows. Instead, Jon’s eyes soften and he squeezes it instead. 

“There was a time a little snow could not stop you from dancing the Barrowland Fling,” Jon teases lightly, but something flickers at the edge of his mouth. A shadow edges over his brow. The slightest stiffness in his shoulders, drawing them up toward his ears. Sansa knows all of Jon’s tells, and she does not need to ask what these are betraying. 

Though her claim is strong, Queen Daenerys is a stranger in these lands. Daenerys needs advisors she trusts and, though she did not easily trust the daughter of the Usurper’s most powerful ally, she took a liking to Sansa’s polite manners and quick grasp of those things easily left to the side of a war table. The rewards were great: Sansa’s counsel won her the loyalty of the smallfolk who benefited from her protection and aid. Now it is Sansa who is to be rewarded in the way she would least like.

If Sansa asked, Jon would concede, bring the queen’s letter from where he has tucked it against his breast. She knows what it says, what Jon does not want to lay at Sansa’s feet. She is sure even that he fought his aunt, offered himself in her place, before bitterly insisting to deliver the summons himself. 

The thought that Jon would do so on her behalf warms her, but Sansa does not wish to think of a summons to the Red Keep, or the messy politics of declining the honor being bestowed on her. Lords have killed for the sort of influence Sansa would cast aside in favor of turning back north, toward home. Sansa decides that a letter like that will be better answered with the reflection of morning and pulls at Jon’s hand until he stands beside her at the fire, then loops her arm through his and rests her cheek on his shoulder. 

It might be that Jon will leave for the south now that the wars are over. Perhaps finding out who he must become — _Jon Targaryen_ , by the gods — will be part of that. It could be that Sansa accepts the Dragon Queen’s invitation to the Red Keep, though every piece of her cries for the North. Perhaps they must be separated by fate, Sansa thinks, but she would rather Jon came with her. She hopes desperately that he will come with her again.

But they have survived the worst the world can possibly hold for them, and they have done it beside the other. What sense is there in allowing the fickle tides of the world to draw them apart again if they fought so hard to stay together?

They should be dead, both of them, but here they are. They are far past the stiff formality of their youth, more than cousins but less than siblings. Or, Sansa thinks as she searches the old scars along Jon’s face to find the new, perhaps they are not _less than_ , but simply something else entirely. 

They are so close now that Jon’s pulse hammers under her hands. A forgotten urge, a half-understood wish, flames up in her chest, sets her own heart racing after his. Sansa looks up to find Jon staring down at her and is filled with a longing for something she can not put to words.

Could it be wrong, she wonders, to want him to come home with her? And, if he could be persuaded, what does it make of her to wonder if she could be the one to convince him there is something worth coming home for?

Sansa does not rely on hopes or dreams anymore, but she hopes for this.

“Jon,” she begins, sliding her hand down his arm until it fits neatly into his, hoping that she can keep her gaze steady. She wants Jon to want this, too, and she does not want to play the games of persuasion to make him want it. Perhaps, if she could only say to him with words what it is she wants. Perhaps if she could summon the courage to only speak frankly with him... 

But Jon turns to her, closes one big hand over hers, and waits for her to finish what it is she started to say. His grey eyes catch the firelight, flicker weariness and grief and that same persistent curse that Sansa cannot shake. 

Hope. 

The old ache in her chest shudders longingly, and Sansa cannot bring herself to ask more of him than what she truly wants: her family, such as it is, back in their home.

“Will you be coming home?” she hears herself ask, her voice far-off and weak and nothing as sure as she wants it to sound. 

“Yes,” says Jon softly, almost as though he is speaking to the flames and not to her. As though he has only just decided himself. “Yes, I think so.”


	3. iii. - fear

“I don’t understand why you must go now,” Sansa protests from the doorway of Jon’s study when the letter bearing the queen’s three-dragon seal comes from King’s Landing. This is not entirely true, for she has always known perfectly well that their arrangement would not last. It only would have been unseemly for Daenerys to summon Jon away from Winterfell any time before now. 

The last year has been good to them. Winterfell is nearly restored to its splendor and Rickon is adjusting well to life as the new lord under Sansa’s careful stewardship. Arya has finally made her way home, and even Bran sent word from the farthest reaches of the lands beyond the Wall that he will return by the end of the year. Sansa’s surviving siblings are almost all together again, but Jon will not be there to see it, though he has longed for it as fervently as she all these years since they first departed. 

But now that the kingdoms are stabilizing again, Jon must go to his aunt half the year. He will either go to King’s Landing, or to her lands across the Narrow Sea that will one day be his to rule, too. Sansa tries not to be ungrateful for what compromise she has. Jon has sacrificed so much to make it possible for her to remain home as Rickon’s steward instead of serving the Queen in the place where she spent her bitterest years. The year with him home to assist was a joy she did not expect.

Jon looks up with a wry smile, his hand pinning the queen’s letter to the desk. “It’s only a half-year before I’ll be back again, Sansa,” he answers kindly, the corners of his eyes crinkling fondly at her. “You and Arya and Rickon will be so busy that you will hardly miss me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jon,” Sansa scolds, lifting her skirt and sweeping into the room like one of the late-winter squalls that rattle the windows of Winterfell. “Winterfell is your home as much as it is mine and none of us will ever be so busy that we would not miss you here.”

She reaches over the desk to take the letter and read it for herself. Then she remembers herself and draws back, but not before Jon can catch her hand in his own. 

Her bond with Jon is unlike what she has with any of her siblings, and a world away from the cold, formal relationship of their childhood. Jon is her friend and she will miss the comfort his quiet, steady companionship has brought her. They have spent countless evenings beside the fire, as often in deep conversation as in companionable silence, and long hours working tirelessly to restore their home so that the other Stark children might have a place to return to. 

And now he will be gone. 

“Besides,” she finally concludes, swallowing dryly when Jon’s eyes find hers and hold her to her place. “Your tireless devotion to restoring our home leaves the rest of us almost nothing to occupy us when you are gone.”

“I can’t imagine you sitting idle,” Jon remarks in a tone that invites jest, abandoning the letter to come around to stand with her, taking Sansa’s other hand in his. “You’ll have some new task that requires your complete attention before long. I understand Lady Mormont’s youngest has quite a liking for Rickon. We might have a wedding in Winterfell by the time I am returned to your excellent care.”

Sansa makes a quiet, irritated noise in her throat, an unladylike, indiscreet gesture that brings another smile to Jon’s mouth. “Don’t laugh at me! I am distraught.” 

“Oh, certainly,” Jon agrees warmly, but the humor has drained from his face. There is a painfully earnest part of Jon that Sansa remembers from their childhood, the quiet, sullen boy who took life very seriously. That part of him which has never quite gone away. For all that she thought him brooding and dispiriting as children, Sansa is now in equal measure absurdly fond of this serious part of Jon.

“I will come back,” he assures her, lifting one of her hands to his mouth for a chaste kiss that Sansa knows is meant to reassure her. “Is it enough to hear that?”

Anything might happen in half a year, and already their lives are changing. Daenerys has implied in her letters to Sansa that she may not be so far away as Winterfell soon, and since Lord Tyrell has renewed his long-distance courtship, Sansa suspects that the queen encourages his suit. Highgarden’s proximity to King’s Landing and Sansa’s persisting usefulness to the crown, of course, being only one of many benefits of the match. And Jon himself must marry soon, of course. 

It is not enough. It will not be enough until Jon understands that he is no longer a fractured remnant of something lost to her. He is not some comfort object she wants to keep near. Jon is… something rather more than that. If he leaves now, Sansa fears she will never be able to tell him just how deeply her affection runs for him, because there will be no returning to these halcyon days they have had together. 

“No,” she says, and her voice cracks, instantly betraying all these fears to him. 

Sansa pulls her hands free from his to rest them on either side of his face, searching herself for the courage she needs to be honest with him. She has not been honest with herself for so long, but she has known since before she understood it that this, that _he_ is what she wants. 

Rather than finding the pretty words to say it, Sansa pushes up onto her toes and kisses him firmly, her soft mouth pressing against his dry lips. He is unresponsive at first and she could almost smile for it. Any other man would have known by now, but Jon — _Jon_ has barely noticed, even when he seeks her out. And even now, he is slow to move, but his hands rest at her hips before jumping to her waist and he slowly opens to her. 

Sansa twirls one of his dark curls around her finger and teases his mouth open before drawing him in for a deeper kiss. She feels warm and light, as though she’s swallowed the bubbling wine they favor for celebrations in the Reach. The warmth from Jon’s hands burns through her dress. The crackling of the fire beyond them. It is, in short, every magical thing she dreamed of as a romantic young girl.

And every tiniest detail of it is etched forever in her memory, so that she will have this memory alone when they are both gone from this place.

Jon sighs against her mouth when she breaks from him, pressing smaller, lingering kisses to the side of his mouth, to his bearded cheek, and to the small square of neck she can reach when she rocks back down to her heels. 

“Sansa.” There is the faintest note of astonishment, confusion, or simply fear in his eyes when he reaches to cradle her face in his hand, but Sansa presses one finger against his bottom lip to silence him. She knows what they must do.

“I know that we have no choice,” she says in as practical a tone as she can affect. “I know you must go. I know that your responsibilities to the throne are greater than yours here at home, but… pray, come home by spring.” 

Her voice trembles a little, but this time she holds herself together, presses her forehead to his one last time before drawing away, looking back over her shoulder only once before hurrying out.


	4. ii. - longing

_Jon,_

_I return your last letter on the same wings that brought it to us, in hope they are as lucky and beloved for you as for us. Your last letter was received with no small amount of joy here. We read it aloud no fewer than three times that night as we tried to imagine the beautiful things wrote of, though I am sure they pale by comparison to the true magnificence of the Free Cities._

_The gifts which you sent along with the letter were only delayed by three days. Arya is particularly pleased with the Valyrian blade you found for her, though I dare not imagine its cost, and I have seen little of Bran since the books you found for him arrived. Rickon asks that I convey his gratitude, but I shall do it no justice, overcome as I am with my own delight. You have spoiled me utterly with the Myrrish lace and the Lyseni pearls that accompanied it. They will make a breathtaking addition to my wardrobe, and I shall save them for something suitably lovely, should you care to see them on your return._

_We all ache for the first touch of spring in the North, Jon. Nara found winter hazel in bloom in the godswood only two weeks ago, and we have already celebrated Burning Night here in Winterfell. It seems so early, but of course they will have already observed the rites of spring at the Great Sept and you will have celebrated the grand masquerade of spring in Lys. I feel every day as though I will find snowdrops the next time I go to pray at the heart tree, but they have not appeared yet. Perhaps they, too, anxiously await your return._

_It has been eleven moons since you left Winterfell. Our fondest thoughts are with you, wherever duty shall call, but there is an emptiness here without you. When your work is done in the east, pray write to me the moment you depart so I might meet you at Widow’s Watch myself._

_Think fondly of us, and fare well on your journey home._

_Sansa_


	5. i. - affection

Sansa rises before the sun, when only the gray of morning breaks the darkness of the night sky, to begin her work. Rickon is a fine lord for Winterfell, young as he is, but the duties of managing his household fall to his elder sister until he marries. That will come with time. Already she has received nearly half a dozen letters from curious mamas, wondering if Rickon is yet betrothed. 

In the meantime, the earliest of spring crops are coming in, and with them has come a renewed breath of life in the North. There are delicate green shoots and a riot of mushrooms popping up in the godswood to be collected. Spring planting is underway, but it will be months before the bounty of the spring harvest can begin in earnest. Months that, the gods willing, Sansa may yet be home to see.

“Dutiful as ever, Lady Stark.”

And there, waiting to meet her in the corridor outside her chambers, the gift Sansa longed for through the final year of winter. 

Jon has been home no more than a week. Sansa wants him to stay, wants to be wrong about the year he spent home with her as the last chance for them to be happy. Together. But already letters arrive from the queen. It will be a matter of time before he is again recalled to her service. He will almost certainly not be allowed to stay longer than a few months, but Winterfell is already brighter place with him in it. 

“Your Grace,” she answers with a formal, sweeping curtsy and an impish smile covered by the cascade of hair over her shoulder. Her affection for him pulses in her chest like a second heartbeat when he takes her hand and presses a warm kiss to it. 

It is a false mimicry of the formality they ought to stand upon, a joke they share to buck the expectations laid upon a Targaryen prince and a Stark noblewoman when they are so much more to one another. Once, Sansa questioned why Jon would stay with her at the end of the war if he is not even the half-brother she mistreated through their childhood. She does not any longer. Now she is sure of it, sure of _him_ , even though their lives are no longer their own. If it were up to them… but it is not. Still, Sansa jealously guards the time she is permitted with him until he must leave her. 

Sansa turns her hand in Jon’s grip to lay her cool palm against his cheek, still warm from his bed. Her affection for him has only grown with time. It is not at all the sisterly longing of their separation or the sharp ache of a wounded girl that nearly led her to his bed for all the wrong reasons. He is borrowed, she reminds herself, though it is a painful thought. 

“A lady’s work is never done,” she finally adds, feeling her heart skip in her chest when his gray eyes lift to hers. “As you well know.” 

“You do justice to your lady mother’s memory,” Jon offers kindly, though Sansa knows that he has few fond memories of her mother. “Highgarden ought to consider itself lucky that such an attentive lady will be minding it.”

At this, his hand — the one rippled with old scars — presses over hers. Sansa’s heart warms at the gesture, even as it sinks through her stomach. Why would he bring up the Tyrell match at a time like this, with a gesture like that?

“Should it? I have not yet accepted Lord Willas’s proposal,” she answers airily instead. Perhaps he does not know, but she does not intend to do so until there is no choice left but to comply with Daenerys’s wishes. She will accept it when there is no place for her in Winterfell and Jon is safely married in the Targaryen way, to a Dornish princess or a Lyseni noblewoman. Only then will she abandon an hopeless dream and not before.

Jon’s eyes betray his surprise. For an instant, his hand draws back like a man burned. Jon is an honorable man who might take comfort in the security of her future, knowing that she will be safe without him. That she can no longer think to tempt him if she is promised to another. That she would be true to a man she has never met and does not love.

He is wrong, of course. There is, after all, some part of her that is still a romantic.

That she could even tempt him is a warming delight that Sansa is not entirely proud of, but she does not draw herself away from him. They stand so close that she can smell the leather and smoke smell of him, the lingering scent of winter and something wild. She could lean forward and taste more than she remembers of a chaste kiss nearly a year past, and she is nearly certain Jon would lean in for it. Anyone could see, anyone would know, and for just the once, Sansa does not think she would care.

She turns to light-hearted humor, instead. “I could hardly leave Arya to mind Winterfell,” she says brightly, tracing an old scar by his eye with her thumb. Then she draws back to resume her place in his life, not as his sister, but as something else entirely. 

Another time, she tells herself, when Jon beats a hasty departure from her, making excuses for the work she has yet to do that day. He leaves her standing in the hall, looking after him and hoping, longing for that which is already beyond her grasp. Another time, she resolves, because she will tell him the truth of it, she _must_ , even if it will change nothing.

It is not affection or old longing that lingers past its time that draws her to him. It is only that she loves him completely, and nothing short of it will ever move her shattered, devoted heart again.


	6. o. - love

The weeks between ravens is enough to drive a patient man to madness, and Jon is not a patient man. He hasn’t told Sansa anything of the letter he sent to Daenerys, but the castle is too small for him to avoid her completely. It makes him irritable and damn near impossible to be near, as Arya is all too glad to tell him, jabbing the pommel of her sword into his ribs with rather more force than sparring requires. 

So, he paces the walls and the woods beyond, disappearing for hours without returning until the deep of night. Anything to burn off the itch of impatience, the specter of hopes he cannot expect to be fulfilled from a queen who denied his four petitions before this one. He has no head for politics, as Sansa would gently remind him time and again when Winterfell was only still being rebuilt under their care. He can’t imagine being king, but it is not his choice any longer. Nothing is, really.

_And since when was Jon Snow the sort of man to wait for permission from a kneeler queen?_

The bitter truth comes to him in Ygritte’s laughing voice, the conscience he’s tried to silence over the years. Riding at a reckless pace through the wolfswood, Jon has no answer for it. And so, as Ghost flickers between the shadows of the trees, Jon indulges the dangerous, destructive line of thought. 

Once, Jon hoped to give Sansa the safe harbor she craved from the reaching hands of those who would use her for political gain. Then he’d only wanted to return to something lost to them long before and rebuild it from nothing. And for so long, it had been what she wanted, too. 

But Jon had misjudged Sansa, and himself. She was capable, stronger than he knew; a sharp blade hidden in soft silks and down. She did not need him for safety, or even to stand in for her lost brothers. And Jon is not the same as who he’d been before, not the boy who needed her, first as the last surviving trace of a home lost and later as the culmination of all his hopes. And now?

Now it is Sansa herself and nothing more that Jon longs for. 

It all seems so silly now, the years of sidestepping one another for propriety, or something else. He and Sansa have wanted each other for the wrong reasons for so long that he did not even notice that the _right_ reasons were growing over them like verdant grass over the wastelands of the Seven Kingdoms. And for what? To let it pass him by when he’s finally certain that he loves Sansa?

Jon doesn’t allow himself to dwell on the decision for long. The ride back to Winterfell is long enough without the nagging doubt from the very corner of his mind, reminding him that this is the height of foolishness.

He leaves the horse in the stables, where one of the younger stable girls is waiting up for him with an oil lamp, and picks his way through the darkness of the castle without a light of his own. By the time he reaches her solar and slips through the unlocked door to her bedchamber, Jon is sure that Sansa must be asleep. 

Her fire has burned down to embers that do a great deal for keeping the chill out of the room, but less to give light to a proper stealing. That is, after all, what Jon is doing, he thinks humorlessly. Assuming Sansa will allow it, but Jon would rather ask _her_ permission than wait for anyone else’s. 

He can hear her stir in her bed, the sigh of her hands on the feather down mattress. Rather than risk frightening her by crossing the room in the dark, Jon moves closer to the fire and calls, “Sansa?”

“Jon?” Sansa’s voice is muddled and heavy with sleep, but he hears her rolling off the bed and fumble in the dark for her lamp. In the dim light it gives, Jon sees her reach for a shawl to drape over her shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

Now that he’s in her room, he feels even more foolish than before. A wildling woman might like to be stolen out of her bed at night, would be expected to give up a token fight, even for a man she desired. Sansa, with her lace-trimmed bedclothes and her long braid glinting in the soft, dancing light, is not a wildling woman.

“There’s a custom among the freefolk,” he begins to explain, coming toward her, despite his mud-splattered boots. Sansa’s upturned face betrays the faintest curve of a smile as she composes herself into a regal vision that does not guard her delight as closely as it has these past years.

“Have you come to steal me from my bed, Your Grace?” 

How Sansa knows about this particular wildling ritual — but Sansa lived alongside wildlings in the war, and some have stayed south of the Wall since. No, Sansa would not be ignorant of their customs, not even this one. 

Jon ducks his head and feels himself smile, though his heart pounds like thunder in his ears. He says, “I thought I would ask first.” 

“That is very courteous of you,” she agrees, rising from her bed to stand in front of him. Standing this close, Jon can almost see her own pulse beating wildly at her neck. He would give everything to take her into his arms, to feel it hammer a tattoo into his chest, but he resists.

“The queen has given her blessing?”

“I sent a raven,” Jon admits, closing his hand into a fist to keep from giving into the itch to touch her. Only a moment longer, he promises himself when he adds, “But it’s not her blessing I need.”

“Oh, Jon,” she sighs and the tightly-held mask falls from her face. “If you were only waiting for me, you could have stolen me away years ago.”

Sansa leans forward in the same motion that Jon pulls her against him, pushing up on her toes to meet his kiss. Her mouth is soft and pink as the spring blossoms, and though he has kissed her the once before, the revelation of how easily she fits into his arms sends a line of sparks up his spine. 

It is a chaste kiss, nothing so desperate as the one that haunted Jon the months he was away. At the soft puff of her sigh against his mouth, though, Jon’s hand holds to her hip and presses deeper into the kiss. Sansa’s hands fumble over his belt, stuttering through the unfamiliar motions until Jon manages the buckle one-handed and she pulls at the strings of his breeches. 

“Patience,” he warns, when she nearly breaks one of them. But Jon is fully clothed and she wears only the linen bedclothes closed in his fist. 

“I love you,” Sansa insists as she tugs at his tunic until Jon pulls it off, too. “And I have been patient long enough.”

It happens quickly after that, in a rapid succession of half-remembered visions that seem more dream than reality. Jon leaves his clothes and boots by the bed and Sansa pulls her linen shift over her head when she retreats into the pillows, bare and glowing in the dim light of her lantern. Jon’s mouth closes around the peak of her pink breasts, traces a line of fire down her belly with his lips until she arches from the pillows with a shuddering cry that goes sharp before fading out to a satisfied moan.

The world comes back into sharp focus when Jon rolls onto his back and pulls Sansa over him, when she slides down onto him with a soft, “Oh,” of surprise. It is this act that is their greatest rebellion, Jon thinks; to gamble with their respective futures in hope of reclaiming them. This reckless dream is what they abandon themselves to, and nothing could be more important then, or perhaps ever again.

“Why?” Jon hears the word from near his ear some time later, when they’re both undone — Sansa more than once, at least. Jon needs a few extra seconds to understand what it means, and Sansa presses her forehead to Jon’s. Forcing his eyes open to meet hers, though they are both clouded with the lingering echoes of their union. “Why did we have to wait so long?”

Perhaps it’s easier to think they weren’t ready before now, not yet desperate enough for love to do the most foolish thing imaginable. Perhaps they were before he left. There is no good answer, Jon knows, but he settles for kissing the pinked apples of her cheeks down to her shoulder, where his whiskered ministrations make her shiver. 

They will rise in the morning to face whatever will come in the face of this, something Jon neither relishes nor particularly dreads. It is not as though any raven sent by Daenerys could change this: that they love each other well enough to do the most foolish thing imaginable for two people in their places. It is done. It is enough.


	7. . coda .

When the raven finally arrives, Sam brings the letter to them in Sansa’s solar and waits for Jon to open it with an anxious, knowing look clouding his brow. Sansa looks up from the household accounts and smiles to herself, leaving Jon to break the wax seal and unroll the parchment himself.

It matters for nothing now, but Jon exhales with a quiet laugh when he skims past the formal introductions with his titles and holdings to the single line written in Daenerys’s hand.

_At least one of us should benefit from her good sense._


End file.
